Personal Server

Personal Servers was a feature used on ROBLOX that allowed players to usually build whatever they want in-game and have it save on its own. Lots of players were able to join and help build with the owner of the game. Some restrictions though were applied such as who can visit, who can build, and who is banned.

The new personal server icon.

Users must've had a Builders Club membership before making a Personal Server. However, all players were able to join a personal server. When the place owner's Builders Club expires, the server is still kept, but another server cannot be made and if the place is changed into a regular game, it cannot be made a Personal Server until the owner got Builders Club again.

Personal servers were discontinued on June 8, 2016, according to a message from ROBLOX.

Contents

History

Personal servers were first introduced by Njay, ostrichSized, and gen2integri at the 2011 ROBLOX Rally. The feature was fully released on November 2, 2011[1]. On May 26, 2016, it was discontinued to be replaced with Team Create.

Features

ROBLOX describes a personal server as "a game that never closes."[2] Unlike a regular game place, when a server closes when all players have left, a personal server never closes. Therefore, the personal server never reverts back to the way it was before users started playing it; this creates the opportunity for personal servers to be used as collaborative building projects. Personal servers can be changed back to a game place and vise-versa.

The following is a chart explaining the differences between a personal server and a game place:

Personal Server

Game Place

Autosaves

✓

✗

Single Instance

✓

✗

Public by Default

✗

✓

Private by Default

✓

✗

Access Privileges

✓

✗

Ban List

✓

✗

Gear Allowed

✗

✓

Tickets Awarded for Visitors Before Removal

✓

✓

Builders Club to Create

✓

✗

Free to Play

✓

✓

Access Levels

How to promote/demote a user within a personal server

The owner and administrators can assign access levels to specific users via clicking the player's name on the leaderboard. These access levels dictate what permissions that player has and what he can and cannot do within the personal server.

The following is a chart explaining the certain permissions various access levels have within a personal server:

Banned

Visitor

Member

Admin

Owner

Ability to play game

✖

✔

✔

✔

✔

Ability to use build tools

✖

✖

✔

✔

✔

Ability to promote/demote other users*

✖

✖

✖

✔

✔

Ability to add and remove administrators

✖

✖

✖

✖

✔

*Except promotion/demotion of administrators

It is advised to use caution when promoting players. Any changes they make to the server, whether constructive or destructive, will be automatically saved, unless the place's version has been changed to other non-destructed version.

Personal Servers within Groups

Personal Servers can be associated with particular groups. A feature of personal servers allows membership and admin can be awarded to members of a group with a certain rank or above. Like associating a place with a group, associating a personal server with a group makes that personal server appear on the group's page.

Criticisms and Issues

A big issue with Personal Servers were griefers. Almost every build place that was created would get griefed by players often creating huge bodies of water or land, completely rendering any previous progress useless. Measures were made to try and alleviate griefers, such as not allowing tools to newcomers by default and having the owner entrust the player with tools, but how they got tools would vary. Often times, the griefer just had to ask for tools or take a tour of the server, acting innocent until they got tools, then flood the server. Since there was no way to fix the grief besides to reset the server entirely, many build servers either got shut down or were just left to rot, turning them into griefing paradises.

Personal Servers were often touted as a useless feature since anything you could do in a Personal Server, you could do in a normal place. Quiz games, RP games, and minigame places existed, but they had to be maintained by admins and were often slow-paced. By scripting your own regular place without the need to set everything up manually, you could have a better place that could run on its own.

You couldn't go into Roblox Studio if the place was a Personal Server, so if you had to put something in via Studio, you had to shut down the place and change it to a regular place, then do your changes, then put it back as a Personal Server.

Team Create

Team Create works just like Personal Servers, except players build in ROBLOX Studio instead of in-game and players can invite others to build with them. Team Create was first announced in a blog post on April 13, 2016, while it was in Beta. It is released. Here are several images of Team Create: